


Dance with the Dead

by Euregatto



Category: Book of Life (2014)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Demons, F/M, Horror, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Post-Movie, Psychological Horror, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 11:26:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2506073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Living in a cruel world has made him as equally merciless. She often tells herself that she likes this quality about him. Cruelty is beauty and hate is the antidote to her mercy."</p><p>But how far will their twisted love take them when an ancient evil returns to destroy the realms they guard, and tear them down from the inside out?</p><p>/Spoilers if you haven't watched the movie yet/</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amor

**Dance with the Dead**

**.One: Amor.**

He lives an exilic life of solitude, far from the juvenescent glamor of her realm. A mythomane like him would better enjoy the place of festering lights and granular meals, yet he lingers in the gloaming of his desolate kingdom, where forgotten souls percolate through the boneyard silence. Great deluges of dust will sweep into gorges and the lonely souls he watches over will scream a sonance of unremitting weariness in the wake of it. It is a job no one should want, especially not for all eternity.

Yet he rules as a pavonine king in a broken world.

She often times pities him. On their good days – when they aren’t teetering on the verge of explosive anger and she can stand in his girth for more than a few minutes – she ventures down into the hypogeum where he dwells to offer him an exiguous platter of her land’s sweetest foods. In return he conjures a bottle of her favorite whiskey for them to share (but soon one bottle will drain into three and even as deiform beings they feel the effects take hold). They’ll set up at a stone table with lopsided boulders for chairs and watch the solemn world crumble, shift open new valleys and swallow up old crevices.

And more often then she cares to admit, she surrenders to his serpentine charm and venomous caresses, lets them become whole once more so that they can ease their relationship into something more than just calamitous passion. It’s because she adores him unconditionally despite his irking behavioral flaws, and he’s always loved her with every ounce of tar in his aphotic heart.

He’s her complete opposite, begrudgingly enough, but she knows that’s why they’ve always worked their relationship like the rusted gears of clocks – grinding with friction but designed to exist as one.

Tonight, for this year’s celebration of her birthday – otherwise known to Mortals and Ancients alike as Dia de los Muerte – he surprises her by emerging from his grave of souls. He’s never been antisocial or shy by any means, but he’s a casual, bleak reminder to every soul, living and dead, of what awaits them all when their lineage runs its course (coupled with the malicious, impish nature that plagues his past). So naturally it comes as no immediate surprise when he glides into her main hall with obsidian wings tucked properly behind his back and that complacent grin stretched across his face, and the spirits passing through fall eerily silent.

“What?” he mocks with a conceited bow, “no welcome wagon for your blighted husband?”

She hesitates for a moment before allowing a small smile to grace her ruby lips. “I was not expecting you, _Xibalba_ ,” she says with her saccharine voice, rising from her throne to make her way towards him.

He appears before her in a burst of emerald smog and obsidian skulls that dissipate into the air, slender hands already gently clasping hers. That’s one thing she’ll give him – he’s a liar, a cheater and a flirt, but he has always, _always_ been gentle with her, though sometimes his devilish demeanor will undermine the placid and tender way he holds her. The line between honesty and fabrication is something he retraces to fit his standards, the wager games they play are manipulated by his foul deeds, and he goads her with gifts and swooning façades to diminish her rightfully placed anger.

But he’s always gentle.

She’s seem him cruelly deceive and trick mortals into death with that two-headed pet of his, witnessed the way he laughs at human sympathy and plays with the severed strings of broken hearts – so, so unlike her, with a violent temper and merciful heart, lips that seep with truth and eyes that pierce through souls like daggers.

But he’s so _gentle_ , and it’s almost sickening how she can love someone like that.

“Is it so wrong for a lonely soul to miss his better half?” he coos, snake-like tongue shaping every syllable to coax her affections into her chest like rising lava. She quirks an eyebrow at him, and his smirk widens. “ _Best_ half,” he amends bashfully.

“No,” she concedes, “but sometimes I wonder if you ever miss me at all.”

He dips her into a viperish kiss, ebony wings spreading wide to betray his bottled excitement. When he swings her around again she’s smiling up at him with swollen lips and hazy eyes. “Of course I miss you mi amor,” he tells her candidly, letting her upright so she can adjust her misplaced hat.

Sick. And _right_.

She recollects their childhood, long before they had ever been tasked to be guardians of such adverse worlds, when he would pelt her window with pebbles in the yawning hours of twilight and she would sneak out to be with him. For a long time, she had figured that this relationship of theirs meant nothing more than a diversion from the responsibilities of life.

But by then, she was in too deep, like sinking gradually into a consuming tar pit. To him she was – still is – _mi amor_ , or _mi hermosa_. To her, he was – and is – called only by his name, _Xibalba_ , which he accepts willing, and it melts him like sugarcane. To her parents – and the rest of the town – however, he was just _calle rata_. It’s crude, but it was true all the same: he is an orphan, a _street rat_ ; with no parents or family, as they had abandoned him as a small child on the streets like some beggar before moving on to more preponderant things, leaving the dejected boy in their wake.

But surviving as a rat is how he’s gotten by, and living in a cruel world has made him as equally merciless. That’s why he is how he is now, and that’s why their sickening relationship is so _beautiful_. She often tells herself that she likes this quality about him. Cruelty is beauty and hate is the antidote to her mercy. He is exasperating and intriguing, captivating and enthralling, more fascinating than anyone else she’s ever befriended in her mortal and immortal lives.

When she was sixteen she was regarded around town as the most beautiful woman in all of Mexico. As a deal with her parents, she was allowed to marry whomever she wanted, so long as it was someone from a pool of noble or renowned lineage. And over just a brief lapse of time she had near-perfect suitors traveling from country sides in every direction – musical instruments tuned into deep chords or extravagant gifts crammed into their bags – in hopes of swooning her into marriage. But she denied their hands and their gifts and their proposals.

She was already in love. She’s been in love since before she even realized what that meant. And she pondered if love was the appropriate term for how she felt about Xibalba.

It was. It is.

 _And that is her mistake_.

One she has agreed to live with, even in eternity, even when she’s screamed at him and he’s deceived her more times than the most commonplace and _healthy_ couple. There should be no point in any relationship when you wonder if your partner admires you anymore, because that would not be a relationship, it would be the tattered remains of a fragmented _lie_. So why is it that their relationship is exactly that – an enigma of questions and kisses and _lies_? _Sickening_ should be the term and _maddening_ should be the motive and all of it _collectively_ is why she should no longer be in _love_ with **_him_**.

 _Yet I am,_ she scolds herself like a slap on the wrist. _I always have been._

And she stares into the crimson void of his eyes, the skulls dipped in blood like rotten candied apples. He’s a liar, a cheater and a flirt, but she continues to take him back each and every time – the man with the heart of oozing tar and promises that turn her sugarcane blood to venom.

Because this whole charade is sick. Because he loves her and she loves him. Because this carousel marriage will revolve until one of them dismounts their broken, grinding steed.

But love is pure, and it is fragile but they keep it together with scavenged strips of tape and threadbare stitching between their souls. Within this lapse of silence between them a spark oozes into her chest and ignites the fire in her gut, surging flames into her throat, under her tongue and onto her lips. She kisses him again, more feverishly than before, feeding him the blazing of her soul through their connected beings. When he pulls back again he notices the renewed shimmer in her angelic gaze.

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?” he inquires suspiciously.

She glides one petite hand down the length of his face and he leans into her caress, submitting to her whimsical, wonderful existence. “No, love… Why don’t you come to visit me more often, _Xibalba_? You linger in the dreadful loam of the Land of the Forgotten with no one to keep you preoccupied. It gets crazy at some point, doesn’t it?”

He chuckles under his breath and envelopes her in his wings. “You’re company enough, mi amor. Besides, nothing’s as crazy as being married to _you_ for all eternity.”

She laughs at that, melting him like ice beneath the inferno of the sun with the weight of her sugarcane pitch, before she guides him forward into a bittersweet embrace.

There’s no telling how long this would last.


	2. Malvado

**Dance with the Dead**

**.Two: Malvado.**

Long before La Muerte and Xibalba were blessed with immortality in the spirit dimension, the Candle Maker kept the worlds in balance with both eyes turned to the Land of the Remembrance and his own realm residing in between. His mistake was keeping his back to the Land of the Forgotten, which was then shrouded in an ever present darkness. The barren lands were under the command of a great, ancient evil as old as the Candle man himself.

A malevolent, horrifying force.

A demon.

Xibalba stands rigidly poised before the massive tablet carved into the flat of the canyon side. The face is decorated with embossed skulls and jagged designs that warn of the evil presence encased within, and the trim is cracked under the tension of the surrounding stone mass. An owl with extended wings and feathers of swords stretches across the panel like a symbolist guardian, the eyes widened into voids, talons sinking into the peak of a disfigured skull.

He presses the alpha head of his staff to the owl’s chest. “Depart from death,” he mutters, smog filtering through his teeth and curling out to lap at the rock division. “Dèjame pasar.”

The barrier ripples with energy, and only a split second later a crack zips down the parallel length of the surface, allowing the doors to hurtle inwards. The shock of impacting the inner walls reverberates through his bones, under his feet, along the canyon. An abyssal blackness welcomes him back.

And then he hears the whispers.

The voices furl through the musky air as it rushes out to meet him, clasping his tar-sodden body in skeletal fingers that promise impending demise. They have no solid reasoning, or any particular language – he recognizes Spanish, English, and then ancient Latin – but the underlying tone is braced with evil and curdles the staleness of the atmosphere to taste like embers on his tongue, lightning in his nerves and poison in his heart. And beneath the sphere of carnivorous chaos, there is a baby wailing.

Then he hears La Muerte, calling out to him from within. “ _Balby,”_ she sings out, the sweet resonance washing over him like a blessing amongst demons. “Balby, come set me free… I’ve been trapped down here for _so_ long…”

The whispers ride chills up his spine. He involuntarily shudders, tightens his grasp on the staff. _That is not La Muerte,_ he tells himself, _she doesn’t call you Balby unless she wants something._

There is a sudden silence that overwhelms him now. It creates an intense ringing of white noise in his ears, and accompanies the barely audible rattling of chains from deep within the maw of the cavern. Xibalba slithers into the awaiting blackness with nothing to light his path – he follows the familiarity of the dampness, the guidance of the close knit walls and the siren-like cooing of La Muerte.

Darkness consumes him for several prolonged minutes… or perhaps it has been hours, he isn’t sure anymore. The labyrinth with do that to any mind. It will consume any ounce of mortal sanity and redefine it with the omnipotent essence of lapsing _insanity_ , breaking the conscious mind like a festive piñata and spilling the liquid contents into the inside of the skull with the force of cascading bricks. Already he can feel his delusions devouring his logic. La Muerte is starting to sound appealing as her calls ascend euphoniously, and he is surrendering to the promising beauty of her glace.

_“Won’t you free me Balby?”_

_Of course,_ he thinks, dragging on into the endless stretch of tunnel. “Of course I will,” he speaks up this time.

As if the labyrinth responds to his remark, dual symbols appear on either face of the narrow wall, signaling the end of the journey, and a dim light breaks from a funnel-like holes overhead that casts an emerald hue into the alveolate desolation. He can see the coliseum-like arena that is piled with broken boulders, clawed up walls and collapsing statues of owls with swords for feathers. The withered trees have chains woven into the eternally decaying branches.

Wings flutter briefly from somewhere to his right as he steps onto the cursed turf.

_I am not alone._

“Have you come to free me?” La Muerte chimes once more, her question followed by a fluttering of bird wings. The words prance around the room at uneven intervals. Then a set of scarlet eyes blinks at him quizzically from the forgotten tree several yards away.

“Of course,” he replies sincerely, coaxing the demon out of the tree.

It is easily twice his size with a strength that counters the undaunted might of bulls; it is a creature with the body of an owl – and the face of a skeletal woman. And with a single flap of enormous wings the beast lands gracefully before him on her razor-like talons, the click-clack of danger grating on his steeled nerves, approaching the smaller deity with her fangs prodding at her lips and owl-esque orbs sizing him up to become her meal. She is evil despite the pearlescent sheen on her feathers and the swart skull pattern on her wings.

**_She is evil._ **

“I have come to free you,” he reiterates, and raises his staff to the tuft of her chest to keep her from drawing too close, “so that I can finally kill you.”

She shrieks and thrusts her talons into his chest, puncturing layers of muscle and slamming him back against the wall. He cries out, but manages to retaliate by extending his claws and slicing a gash into her abdomen. She tosses him like a ragdoll into the closest statue. It explodes against the collision, collapses, engulfs him in a landslide of rubble.

The owl demon hisses with satisfaction. “You cannot kill me so long as I am imprisoned here, _Xibalba_. And no amount of sheer stupidity would ever compel you to visit me… unless it is Dia de los Muertos.” She hesitates, watching the rippling black shadow ooze out of the debris and solidify into the Forgotten spirit, like paint rising up against gravity. “It must be, isn’t it? This is the only time of year you come by to make sure I have not found some way to break the seals.”

Xibalba clutches his chest as the gashes struggle to close. The pain flares up when a black substance snakes through his fingers, drips across the floor, and slides into the cracks of the marked cobblestone. He leans on his staff for support as he rights himself on his feet. “Yes, but by Ancient Rules, I have not forgotten about our match… _Lechusa_.”

At the mutter of her name, La Lechusa’s feathers bristle with excitement. “And to think I was beginning to miss you.”

Xibalba swallows against the liquid fire that permeates his immortal flesh. “You’ve given me quite the”—he shudders when another tide of pain ripples through his system—“ _welcome wagon_.”

“You know, Xibalba… We’re the same, you and me.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

She rushes up to him with the speed of a bolt of lightning, and one set of her talons constricts his neck, ramming him back against the wall. He does not fight back this time. “You may have won that wager and locked me down here, certainly, but that doesn’t make you any better than I am.” Her hollowed, soulless stare glances him over. “What is it that La Muerte sees in you, _hm_? You’re a _demon_ , just like me. _A liar_. You are _evil_ in every sense yet only _I_ am judged as the vile beast!”

His eyes are consumed by a stygian shadow that cascades under the crimson skulls like spilled oil. “I am _nothing_ like you,” he seethes through grit teeth, but the weight of her ire clasps his sanity and the most bestial, wicked nature within him writhes up towards the surface.

“ _Evil_ is what gave you your place here. The gift to rule the Land of the Forgotten must be traded with equal debt: to sacrifice your threadbare humanity and become a demon yourself.” She grins as the darkness visibly boils through his system, consuming the malachite energy pulsing through his body. He’s cracking under her pressure. _She can feel it_. “You’re very lucky I am not eager to kill you where you stand! I would rather see that vicious side of you again, the _real_ you.”

An inhumane growling vibrates the pit of his chest. _He’s breaking_. He’s losing himself and his only remaining shreds of sanity beneath the dire power she’s influencing into his core.

“ _Yes_ , just like that, Xibalba. Let the demon consume you!” She chuckles devilishly as he suffocates on the points of her talons and the barbarous evil fighting for control over his body. “Oh, this would be the most fun I’ve had in ages… But alas…”

Suddenly, she drops him, padding away as he chokes on the closed passage of his throat.

The barren quiet settles across them again. The tenebrous atmosphere shatters away and Xibalba regains control of himself, the shadows that had been clawing into his system vanishing with the tides of beryl soul. Lechusa grunts under her breath. “But alas we have a game to play.”

“Chess again?” Xibalba presumes, rising up with the assistance of his staff. He’s regaining his composure. He’s still him. “It seems to be the favorite game among mortals.”

“ _No_.”

“No?”

She beats her wings and soars onto a perch on one of the sagging statues. “I am bored with childish games and do not wish to play a match against you today. You can return next year.”

Xibalba pauses for a moment to study her features. Her head twists completely around to ignore his imminent gaze, her down of white feathers ruffles as her wings tuck into her sides, and then she settles complacently into her spot. “If that’s what you wish,” he agrees finally, limping for the tunnel. “By the Ancient Rules, I’ll leave you be.”

When she is sure that he is far enough gone to make her move, she sails down to the symbols at the maw of the entrance.

_It’s time._

She clutches the tar in her talons for good measure – the gunk she had so violently ripped from his body during their quarrel – and gradually smears it across the garnet symbols with a gloating laugh that echoes down the corridor in his wake.

The poor bastard didn’t even see it coming.

 

* * *

 

La Muerte does not notice Xibalba’s absence until she finds herself in her main hall with one empty chair at the feast at her table. The spirits that bustle about to enjoy the bountiful, palatable meals with her do not question why she stares longingly at the unoccupied seat. Instead they eat their fill, rotate out of the room to be with other loved ones, and new families shuffle in to take their place and honor the graceful woman who keeps them content in the afterlife.

And then Xibalba does appear, in his burst of emerald smog and dissipating ebon skulls, at the entrance of the grand dining room. The spirits at the table allow the quiet to consume the veil of previous jubilee.

“Xibalba,” La Muerte chimes after jumping up in immediate surprise, but her giddiness depletes when she notices that he’s clutching the gashes across his chest. She appears before him in the puff of vermillion and gold petals and candle light, hands flying up to cover his. “You’re injured,” she utters under her breath.

“I said a prayer to close them up,” he responds blatantly. In place of the black substance that had been oozing out of him before, there is now a gentle white light that sears his wounds closed. It saps at his strength but he no longer feels the need to lose consciousness – and he’s grateful he’s not in the mortal realm right now, because injuries up there would take much longer to heal.

Her expression instantly twists into something bordering seething anger. The flames of her candles ignite with a passion that laps them upwards and out, sending the fires to the brink of explosion. “ _She_ did this to you, didn’t she?”

“Not here,” he shoots back, enveloping her in his wings. He whisks them away up onto the perch of a balcony that rotates around the tower’s peak at spontaneous intervals of time, pitching them around the sky leagues above the Remembrance city. When he pulls away a moment later he keeps one of his wings extended across her shoulders to cloak her in a veil of sable feathers so she remains pressed against him. “Now you can freak out.”

“Did you provoke her?” La Muerte spits, and Xibalba can’t tell if it’s rage or jealousy that fuels her sudden emotions.

He shrugs passively. “I saw through her trickery and she didn’t appreciate it.”

“ _Xibalba!”_

“I’m serious.”

_You’re lying. I know it._

“Oddly enough though, she didn’t feel up to an apologetic game of chess.” He takes her arm and lifts it carefully to his mouth to press a pliant kiss to the back of her hand. “Do not fret mi hermosa, I feel better now that you are by my side.”

She exhales her vexation before allowing a smile to replace the scowl on her rubescent lips. He’s a charmer. _Flirt_. He works his natural serpent charisma and she struggles to suppress how much she loathes herself for falling into his allurement each and every time. There is no longer a fine – or even existent – line between her somber thoughts: _do you love me, or do you use me?_ But she allows him to slide, just this once (or so she consistently tells herself) and runs her sacchariferous fingers along the edge of his jaw. “Do you remember the day you proposed to me?”

From this high up, Xibalba spots the familiar Revolution twins of the Sanchez family bickering with each other over something trivial. He ponders how he and La Muerte had been just like that when they were adolescents, when he would get himself into maelstroms of trouble and she had no choice but to vouch for his side of the story so he could avoid jail. And he remembers that they were the twins’ ages when he had swooned her over with his polished personality and a question for her hand in marriage. “How could I forget?”

“You used that same line on me.”

“It worked.”

“It did.”

He twirls her around to face him and gingerly presses their bodies together, the same way he first had when she told him, _yes_. “Is it working now?”

“Better than I will ever admit,” she ushers with her ambrosial voice like liquid honey, meager hands tenderly cupping either side of his face. He leans down to meet her, to welcome the bliss of her tantalizing lips and the mix of alluring toxins in his embrace.

And they seal their fate with a venomous kiss.

 

* * *

 

She perches on the edge of her bed, slender fingers sealing the center zipper of her dress. The threading metal teeth connect with audible pops that resound through the silence of her chambers, located at the tower’s uppermost floor with no doors for any normal spirit to wander through. Immortal souls like them have little use for sleep, but Xibalba is beneath the covers with both hands folded over his wounded chest, humming with a verdigris energy as his body amends itself at the broken seams.

She locates her discarded hat across the room and adjusts it on her head, proper like a lady, thank you very much.

“Where are you going?” Xibalba mutters under his breath, one eyelid cracked open to watch her venture about.

“It should be nightfall in the human world, so I’m going to pass over.”

He chuckles under his breath. “Why don’t you stay with me for tonight?”

La Muerte saunters over to his side of the bed and sits down next to him, running the length of his face twice over with her crystallized fingertips. He returns the soothing caress with an affectionate hum. “You need to be sleeping,” she says matter-of-factly, not like a mother coddling a child, but like a general commanding a soldier.

“Fine, fine. I’ll miss you~”

“I’m sure,” she laments, rising back to her feet.

In a burst of sunset petals and candlelight she traverses the weakened plane of realms and plants herself on the arch of a stone palisade in the north of a graveyard. San Angel is as lively this year as it has always been – and she finds herself smiling as the children of the town race about in circles amongst each other, play fighting with wooden swords and chasing stray hens. She locates the Sánchez tombstone a handful of yards away, surrounded by Manolo, Maria and a couple of townsfolk who pass by to pay their respects to the family that saved San Angel.

La Muerte wonders why she bothers to associate herself with humans after the fiasco Xibalba caused four years prior. She knows he’ll just snoop around prodding her into wagers when he has nothing worthwhile to put on the line. And odds are, they’ll get into a bicker, or she’ll end up bantering him and he’ll further enrage her, and by the dawn of the following morning they will have sworn off seeing each other again for another umpteenth centuries.

She presses her knuckles to her throbbing temples. _What an immature little…_

A baby wails.

La Muerte glimpses around for the crying child, but when the infants she spots appear to be perfectly content, she turns her attention to the distance. The desert that spans the outer rim of the south side of town coxes her to warp to the edge of the region. Still the baby cries, perhaps abandoned, perhaps at the mercy of coyotes. She paces towards the sonorous screeching, which grows louder the further from town she travels.

And just as suddenly as it began, the sobbing stops.

An omnipotent aura rakes chills down her spine. _Something isn’t right._

Before she realizes exactly what she’s walked into, a hoot startles her. To her immediate right is an owl perched on the arm of a cactus, the snowflake feathers patterned with onyx skulls, and curious eyes void of fear.

It sits. It watches.

_This isn’t right._

And then its beak splits open into a black, featureless inside to unleash an unholy scream, like a shrieking child mangled by wild dogs.

The realization that it’s Lechusa impacts her with the weight of a careening boulder. **Lechusa** – free, broken out of the sealed chamber, dangerous and capable of _anything_. She’s already nearly succeeded in killing Xibalba the first time, there’s no telling what her intentions are now… whether she wants to leave La Muerte a mangled mess for Xibalba to find, or if she just wants to lacerate them both for the sport of it.

There is nothing scarier in this world than the thought that you’re completely at the mercy of a vile force that can take your life, and you cannot stop it.

La Muerte teleports for the safety of the Land of the Remembrance but the demon follows suit. In between the weary realms the talons lash out of the void just as La Muerte reflexively rolls out of the way; one leg misses her completely, but the other leaves deep gashes that run the length of her torso, over the arch of her hip and down her thigh.

 ** _You can’t escape,_** a monstrous voice echoes out from all around her. **_I’ll show Xibalba the price he has to pay for messing with me!_**

Panic is overwhelming every train of logical thought that crosses her mind. Terror is overriding her desire to stand and fight and all she can manage to think is getting somewhere _safe_.

Instinctively, La Muerte launches a fireball on an upwards arc that impacts the underbelly of the owl demon soaring above her.

Lechusa screeches, dives out of the nebulous pass and disappears.

Only a second later she breaks through the passage from the left as if throwing herself through a window pane, and rams La Muerte with a full bodied tackle, slamming her out of the warp. The Remembrance deity crashes out of the transport, tumbles along the earth of what might be the mortal world, and only comes to a stop when she connects with the side of a stone tomb.

She’s in a graveyard, somewhere, she doesn’t know where.

_Where…?_

She doesn’t think she’s visited this place before. The sky is a void, cloudless, starless; the wind does not blow, and the air tastes dark like the damp frost of winter without the cold. The land is flat, parched of water and riddled with broken tombs that have no distinct markings. A creeping feeling of solitude and bitter hate wafts through her suddenly, as if influenced by the morose atmosphere this place breeds, whispering to her entire lifetimes of evil deeds done well and how easily flesh can be ripped from mangled, fragmented bones.

It terrifies her to even consider where she might be.

It terrifies her to realize that such a realm like this exists.

Lechusa appears in a bloom of feathers only several meters away. She is not an owl anymore, but in her demon form, with that skeletal face and alluring female features. "I'm going to kill you La Muerte," she taunts, spreading her wings wide. "I'll drop your head in Xibalba's lap and writhe in jubilee as he succumbs to the despair."

_No._

_Get up._

La Muerte struggles to her knees, the pain spilling out of her wounds, numbing her nerves like viper bites.

_I have to get away._

In a final act of pure desperation she presses her palms to the dark, loamy earth and screams. The energy surges into the ground.

And then it explodes upwards as pillars of fire and light that punch through the dirt into the obsidian sky, blasting Lechusa from beneath her feet. Her pained shrieks are drowned in consuming flames. Utilizing her chance to escape, La Muerte zips back into the travel passage between worlds, sailing along the void till she feels the beckoning of familiar sights. She bursts out of the warp, hits the ground like a falling star, and manages to roll into her inertia to guide herself upright once more.

She’s back in the San Angel graveyard, but less people are here now than before and she’s grateful no one witnessed her grand entrance. But here, with the visible stars and the lights and noise and wind that brushes her candied skin… it makes her realize she had _definitely_ not been on Earth, whatever that place was.

_Hopefully La Lechusa is too injured to come back for a while._

Her body throbs, her ribs groan in agony.

_I’m losing consciousness…_

The now vacated Sánchez family tombstone offers her little support, but she has limited ability to move with such severe injuries to her side and sits against it graciously. There is not even enough energy for her to take a different form. So she mumbles a weak Hail Mary to expel the paralyzing ooze from her system and waits peevishly for strength to return to her once more. The warmth of her crippled soul trails from the wounds, slithers dangerously down her abdomen and leg like mortal blood.

_It hurts._

She digs her nails into the limestone beneath her to ease the pain that seizes her mind. Lechusa will recover soon, and then she will be in danger once again. But for now she must rest and for now she must pray.

“ _Xibalba_ ,” she whispers to the wind, “what have you done?”

 

* * *

 

At the same time, Xibalba stirs awake because somewhere, in the subconscious void of his mind, he knows that the love of his life is in danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *strums guitar* Guess who's making an appearance next chapter~  
> So glad everyone's liking this project so far. Thanks for all the support last chapter!  
> I wanted to write the fight scenes longer initially, but since this is just the beginning of what's to come, I chopped it down.  
> La Lechusa was something I wanted to write about anyway so I figured I'd make her the main antagonist of the story, versus the other demons and myths I had down originally. Interesting subject if you want to read into it.  
> Updates: corrected tags and warnings / upped rating just to be on the safe side / updated this quickly because I won't get to the next chapter for a few days, probably not even until the end of the week, so I figured I'd leave you with something until then.  
> Hope you enjoyed~


	3. Ayudar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay!

**Dance with the Dead**

**.Three: Ayudar.**

 

La Muerte doesn’t realize she’s lost consciousness until a familiar beckoning has stirred her awake. The insistent voice jabs at her brain, threatening to crack her skull open like an egg against a pan and spill the contents of her memories into the vacuity of her subconscious. It prods. Picks. Rifles through the yawning fragments of her mind. She doesn’t want to be awake, be aware or be active right now; she doesn’t even want to _be_.

_My lady?_

_Can you hear me?_

_Wake up._

The voice is solid but fluid, like rapids cascading over a flattened rock. She recognizes the tone almost immediately.

_It’s me._

_It's Manolo._

“Oh, Manolo…” Her throat is raspy. She swallows, tongue grating against the sandpaper texture of her arid mouth. Tries again. “It’s been a while…”

Everything is shrouded in blackness. Her head pitches, her side throbs. She barely registers his movements outside the bereft nothingness that threatens to shove her backwards into unconsciousness again. His presence prowls the wasteland of reality, and then his hands firmly grasp her back and one of her shoulders to adjust her upright against the stone. Though her wounds scream in protest, she allows him to assist her.

“My lady,” he says again, scattering the fog in her midst. She becomes more aware of him now. “You’re hurt. Who did this to you? Was it Xibalba?”

“ _No_. No, he would _never_ …” She grasps Manolo’s shoulder when a genesis of renewed pain rockets through her veins like brief bursts of lightning, exploding with light, dissolving like lit paper. The flames consume her raw. She almost loses herself in the encompassing agony.

“Then who was it?”

She opts out of answering him and recites a Hail Mary under her breath in what Manolo recognizes as backwards Spanish. The dimming light beneath her pallid skin glows to life, giving off an angelic essence that radiates through Manolo's own being. The warmth settles across him like a sheet, thin and merciful and divine, irking musings of kindness into his ears when graveyards speak of only death.

_What is this?_

“Let’s get you up,” he coaxes after realizing she isn't going to respond, moving her arm around his neck. He hauls her up to her knees, hesitates when her resounding cry reaches his ears, and then pulls her up again. She leans on him to balance her taller self on her unsteady legs. “Come, let me take you somewhere safe.”

“No!” She attempts to pull away from him but he catches her on the rebounding stumble. “No, Manolo _please_ … I don’t want you to get involved.”

“It’s okay, just trust me.”

“You’re so kind, but I cannot accept your help. I will travel back to the Land of the Remembered”—she clutches the ache that wedges scalding pewter needles under her skin—“ _mierda_ , immediately, once I regain my strength.”

Manolo allows her a brief moment to grasp the reigns of reality before he continues. “If you don’t mind my saying, you look like you could use someplace to stay while your wounds heal. Let me aid you.”

La Muerte exhales a gentle sigh, clasping her petite hand under his jaw line. “Trust my words, Manolo: I do not want you involved in this. It’s a burden I do not wish to bear.”

“I found you on my family’s grave. You came here for a reason.”

She hesitates. “I did come here, didn’t I?”

Manolo stares up at her expectantly, awaiting her answer, studying the slight wavers in the patterns that carve hieroglyphics into the pallor of her face. She doesn't want to drag him into this. It's too dangerous. Lechusa is merciless; she'd skin his flesh from his bones or choke him out in a realm of his own worst nightmares. He would be killed, no doubt, if she deemed him worth her efforts.

_But I am vulnerable out here in the open, and there's no telling when Lechusa might return._

“Very well, I will accept your offer. Show me the way.”

* * *

The nightfall cleaves its name across the valley as its swarthy presence swallows the lingering remnants of candlelight. The promise of danger is ever present in the total, eclipsing darkness. They travel swiftly, stalking the skein of paths of San Angel, passing into the front of Manolo’s home. He knocks the door open with his hip before acting as her crutch to guide her inside. “Sit here,” Manolo remarks, helping La Muerte lower onto the front of the staircase.

“Thank you…”

“What do you need?”

“Salt."

“For what?”

“Just bring it, quickly.”

She may have lost consciousness again, she isn’t sure, but by the time she realizes she is awake again Manolo is gone, and the background is stirring to life with clattering glass in the kitchen. La Muerte’s wounds are sealing rapidly but her strength is all but depleted, leaving her to sit like a wounded animal on the base of the escalier. She humors her host – or perhaps it is only funny to her – by whisking her hat off her head and levitating it over to the pegs near the door to hang, just to be polite.

Then Manolo finally returns, empty handed. “I don’t have any salt… I can purchase some from the mart. It’s cheap, not pure, but it’s salt all the same.”

“No. You need pure salt not…” She clutches her burning wound. “I need to go. If I stay here without the salt barrier you will be in mortal danger…”

“But you’re gravely injured. I’ll go to Maria, she’s with her father for the night but I’m sure they’ll have-”

“ _Don’t_.”

Manolo kneels beside her, clutching her free hand between his, reassuringly but candidly. “Please tell me what is wrong. I’ll do everything I can to help you. After all, you gave me back my life. I owe you everything.”

La Muerte casts him a flagging smile. “You’re too generous, Manolo. However, I’ll tell you, if that is what you wish.” She hesitates, as if teetering on the opening of her speech, suspending him between the vale of curiosity and desire. He moves to sit beside her now, and when she's sure where to begin, she does, “Have you heard of La Lechusa?”

“Yes, but I haven't heard much. They say in some towns that she’s a shapeshifting witch who lures her victims out into the open and then eats them.”

“That’s not entirely it.” La Muerte exhales a despondent sigh that seems to rattle the quiet sliding through the cracks of the house. "She had once made a pact to offer her soul in trade for brutal strength and the ability to change form. Unfortunately, walking between realms as neither a spirit nor a mortal came with some... unforeseen consequences. Upon her death she was forced to reside in the Land of the Forgotten."

She shuts her eyes to reflect on the first time she had seen La Lechusa.

_The demon perches on a stone palisade overlooking her desolate kingdom, talons sinking into the sturdy material as if slicing through mere flesh, the distilled quiet muffled by her throaty growling. La Muerte steps around the formation in attempt to avoid the beast when stray pebbles crunch beneath her feet. The owl twists her head around, a complete one-eighty, feathers ruffling in alarm and eyes glistening like moonlit orbs in the cimmerian shadows._

"She had never been so violent in her mortal life, but in the place of bereaved memories, there are no rules to what one can do. Like many of the Forgotten souls beneath her command, she became consumed by wrath. Hate. Envy of the living. Vindication towards the choices she regrets."

_The dread constricts her then, as if she's displayed on a stage before an audience, like they've cut her open and splayed her ribs apart for the scientists to observe. The thrilling anxiety that is nothing like exhilaration, and everything like the knowledge that someone can see straight through no matter how many barriers you throw up. Then she realizes that is how an owl hunts - she is the hidden prey, a mouse, zipping along the maze in attempt to avoid the beast that can command the skies and shred the ground._

"Cruelty came naturally to her after that," La Muerte continues, letting the thought slip out of her conscious mind, "so as she dictated the barren world with her malicious powers, the evil consumed her. Eventually she became a vessel of utmost antipathy."

"A demon," Manolo assumes.

"Yes. But Xibalba was not afraid of her like every other spirit had been. He craved that immortal power for himself, aware of the consequences of obtaining the right to rule a hellish world but undaunted irregardless."

_She waits for the creature to attack, but after several prolonged seconds of utter dissonance between her rapid breaths and the staleness of the air, she emerges from behind the mainstay. The demon is focused on the spirit that is standing before her now, turning her body to face him, spreading her wings wide with imperative ire. La Muerte knew Xibalba had come here - followed him to stop this charade before he was killed again. There is a gargantuan dual-headed snake that is curled protectively around him, rivaling Lechusa's own size, both sets of fangs barred as a warning._

"What did he do?" Manolo asks, watching her for any changes in her expression.

_She is accepting his challenge, the intimidating hissing of the serpent fueling her inclination to fight._

**_"I played Lechusa for her right to rule."_  **

As if on cue, Xibalba appears in the geyser of his emerald smog with his claws gripping the amending wounds across his chest. His glare is fixated on La Muerte, as if he had mapped out exactly where this conversation would end up, should he dare to start it. Scrutinizing and incredulous. _Angry._ A misplaced sinister energy crawls across his eyes and seeps into the spiderweb crevices of his bice soul. Then he growls, “Why did you let him help you?”

“He offered.”

“He’s in danger!”

“Maybe you should not have let her out!” she snaps back, shooting up to her feet despite the stabbing ache in her body.

Xibalba grits his fangs together. “You think I did this on purpose? I have no idea how the seal broke!”

“Then you should have spent less time playing chess with a demon and more time focusing on how to keep her securely locked away.”

“So now this is my fault?!” From somewhere beyond the boundaries of the shutter-sealed windows, the shrill cry of an injured bird resonates into the front room. Acting reflexively, Xibalba conjures up a pile of salt in his palms, and whisks about the house, leaving a pillowed layer of grain against the edges of the walls and along the sills. "Forget it, I have no time for arguing with you! I'm sealing this house."

Manolo watches the immortal being work with his head quirked curiously. The Forgotten ruler disappears upstairs for only a split second before whisking himself over the balcony and back into the front hall to seal the door. “What’s all that for?” Manolo questions as the amaranthine being lines the final window sill.

“To keep you safe,” Xibalba replies promptly. "Lechusa cannot pass over or into anything that is pure." 

La Muerte clutches her searing wounds again as her soul responds to the familiar presence of her husband across the room. The rage that dashes through his veins on false heartbeats like spreading toxins is converting his normal self into a being of animosity, and the danger raises red flags in her system and perks up the shackles along her neck. She swallows the urge to cast him out. Changes the subject. "You're losing control."

"I'm _not._ "

"I can feel it, Xibalba. Do not lie to me."

"I said I'm _fine_. The real question is whether you are."

La Muerte decides against pressing him any further. She does, however, coax Manolo to stay behind her with a wave of her hand. “I will be alright, but Lechusa has wounded us both nonetheless. I managed to burn her, but she heals faster than we do."

"She probably knows you're here by now, too."

An immediate realization hits her from the base of her skull. "What will we do about the Candle Maker?”

Xibalba breathes, recollects himself for another lapse of time. He thinks about the Seer of Mortals before grunting under his breath. “Lechusa can't step into his realm, but if he makes any attempt to leave that place... especially when he notices our absence. Odds are he's felt our distress already." He glimpses at her out of the corner of his eye... has to breathe again as the shadows consume his vision and the urge claws upwards along his spine. "I’m going to warn him, but then I’m hunting down Lechusa.”

“Don’t go!" La Muerte exclaims suddenly, appearing beside him so abruptly he's nearly thrown aside. "Please don't go after her, _please_.”

“No one is allowed to hurt you and get away with it. I don’t care who it is nor how powerful, demon, mortal, or otherwise.”

“You’ll get killed if you go by yourself, especially with your injuries still amending. Wait for me to heal, I’ll help you; we can do this together.”

“Absolutely _not_.”

“You don’t get a say in it!”

“I get a say in whether my wife gets murdered by my own mistake!”

She shoves him against the wall by his collar, nails digging into him like razor-edged vices. He reacts with an almost animalistic snarl, but she grasps him more vivaciously. “Your _wife_ , Xibalba! I’m your everything but that makes you _my_ everything too!”

There is a silence that settles uncomfortably between them. La Muerte staggers, the numbing pain overwhelming her previous bout of passion, and Xibalba catches her by the waist to keep her securely on her feet. She shudders in his frigid touch. He breathes again, feeling the energy expelling from her body with every strained movement, every pained gasp. _He breathes._  

“…Okay. Okay, I get it. But the Candle Maker must still be warned. And if I can’t go… then who will?”

As if inspired by an aesthetic, Xibalba glances at the renowned torero who just stares back at him. Manolo swallows dryly. “What's with that look?”

“I have an idea." Xibalba assists La Muerte back to the staircase and sets her down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I’ll be right back, don’t move.” He dissipates into a burst of smog and his meager shadow disappears into the darkness.

Manolo faces La Muerte once more, his hands curled into fists. "What should I- My lady?"

She is unconscious again. Her chest rises steadily but her exhales wheeze out of the bones of her chest, and air whistles from a gash that might have punctured deeper than he thought. Above the calm that rattles the solid walls of his home, he recognizes the unnerving coo of an owl from somewhere behind the window.

_It is calling to me._

He takes up his guitar from its place resting against the far wall. It offers him just enough comfort to push the beckoning call from his mind before he sets himself down in the old chair by the kitchen window. He plucks his chords absently, keeps his gaze on the white down of the bird that resides on the roof across the street. The chest feathers are charred like coal, as if it had been scathed by fire.

" _Manolo_ ," it sings, though its beak does not move and its nebulous eyes remain fixated on him.

He slams the shutters closed.

But for the rest of the night, the voice continues to travel amidst his quaint house, slithering into his weary songs, and finally, his imminent dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was laughing because I was trying to write this without including Manolo sitting them down to talk this out like a marriage counselor.
> 
> And guess who I'm bringing in next time~  
> Thanks for all the comments so far, you are all so amazing! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
> 
> I forgot to mention last time that I have no specific length for the chapters, but they will be anywhere from 2-5 thousand words. Next chapter is already at 3k though, so it should be up by next weekend! Hopefully. Unless I get too many assignments... but i'm aiming for next weekend!
> 
> La Batalla and All You Are are short stories on my profile if you want to check them out.


	4. La Pesadilla

**Dance with the Dead**

**.Four.**

.

.

.

When you’re told to consider the theme of marriage – real, truthful marriage, no matter what background or ethnicity – what are the first concepts to spring to mind?

Do you think of love?

            Of course. La Muerte would always think of love. It was her foundation for marrying a man like Xibalba, even with the entirety of the town against it. She knew she had a connection with him from the moment they met after he tried to steal fruits from her auntie’s wagon at the market, and love manifested like a withering flower stretching into the dying sunlight. He would pelt her window with pebbles to coax her into sneaking out with him, or scale the dangerous ledge into her room when she was too ill to bother rolling out of her sheets. She knew she loved him. She knows she still loves him.

Devotion?

            She does, occasionally. Xibalba can be sweet, she supposes, especially when he exerts just enough effort to convince her that he’s sincere about his feelings. He used to be skilled at carving, when they were human with beating hearts and scarred flesh, and on her birthday he would present her with hand-carved wooden animals. Sometimes, a jewel or expensive gem would accompany it too – an orphan like him couldn’t afford such luxuries and trinkets, but she never questioned where he got (stole) them from. Perhaps she figured it would bruise his pride. Perhaps she didn’t want to acknowledge his most salient flaw.

Rings?

            She still does, sometimes. He gave her a simple ring the day he proposed to her. Not stolen, he promised – purchased by selling his carvings, of snakes and donkeys and dogs, a talent refined through years of practice. (He’s telling the truth about the ring, just this once, so just this once, she elects to believe him).

Children?

            She hadn’t. She didn’t even know she was pregnant until she stirred one night to a pain in her legs, and found the blood of miscarriage soaking her sheets. They were never able to kids afterwards, even though she loved children and he submitted to her desire for one of the little shits without a complaint. Her family – amongst the populace of the town – had claimed, for a long while, how disappointing it was that her beauty would end with her. And Xibalba had commented on how he’d make an absolutely  _horrendous_  father, with a woeful legacy, threadbare patience and no family history to pass down the lineage.

How about faithfulness?

            She never did, not once, not until he turned his anger over their lost child into an excuse to whore himself off to random women around town. He cheated on her more than once – singular affairs, one night stands. Never in love with them, but certainly not faithful to his wife. And he would forget about them in a matter of minutes, especially when he returned home to her, and she would abandon her initial fury. She’s always been forgiving and he’s just too sly with his words. He always,  _always_  coaxes her to embrace him once more while she hounds him between her legs with the ticking of bombshell rage.

What about honesty?

            Yeah, right. When the line becomes blurred and it’s almost impossible to tell if he’s ever lying or voicing an honest opinion, she decides to doubt him. There is no guarantee that he will be considerate of their relationship. He can hurt her, not with pain but with  _lies_. It does hurt, emotionally. It drives her to the brink of psychological destruction, then crumbles her mental foundation from beneath her feet. Maybe he should have been more faithful and kind. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so jealous and selfish.

So why does she continue to love him? At what point does love become a mask for insanity, and what happens when the veil finally cracks?

.

.

.

 ** _Th - get -_**  

.

.

.

 -  ** _for_**  - 

.

.

.

Static. A breaking voice.

Fading in.

Fading out.

.

.

.

**_Manolo -_ **

He can barely make any sense of it.

.

.

.

**_They're -_ **

_They're what?_

.

.

.

**_They’re forgetting you._ **

_Who’s forgetting me?_

**_You know who._ **

**_You can’t pretend you have no clue._ **

Something swings in the darkness that shrouds his obverse side. The entity is accompanied by the acute sound of straining rope, dragging flesh, creaking wood like stepping across loose floorboards. A chill crawls its way along the length of his back with the defined edges of skeletal fingers, applied beneath too much pressure despite the absence of a solid being. He floats, almost. There is nothing beneath him yet he is stationary. It has to be a dream.

_I don’t know who you’re talking about._

**_I’m talking about –_ **

Just as suddenly as it had come, the voice fades into the oblivion. Mist has swirled in the quiet to take its place, confluent with his approaching vision, as if it chooses to blind him when his eyes are open. Yet they aren’t open. He knows his lids are pressed together but he can still  _sense_  and  _see_  and  _smell_  and  _hear_ , all that is around him, the hazardous fog and the ominous noises behind him. It has to be a dream. It has to be–

**_– everyone –_ **

He nearly jumps as the whisper, a blackened sonance with the volume of a collapsing building, emits from behind him, right in his ear, all around him at once. It’s almost recognizable to him – perhaps it is – and he can only reach instinctively for his swords. Neither of the hilts are there. He is weaponless. Exposed. Everything is beginning to smell like rot and black mold and the wetted wood after a merciless thunderstorm. There is only the mist and the scents and the whisper to occupy the familiarity of danger.

_Why…_

Cruel laughter echoes out from every origin of the mysterious voice. It rebounds around his mind, laps at the ghostly air that is threatening to choke him.

_Why are they forgetting me?_

**_You act like you don’t know._ **

_I don’t._

The wood threatens to snap beneath the weight of the swinging.

**_It’s a shame, really._ **

The laughter is ebbing into a wicked screech.

**_Such fine family heritage like yours._ **

The rope strains.

**_All for naught._ **

The flesh scrapes.

He turns to face the sound now. There is a sudden blitz of light that awakens a dawn of memories – and he finds himself standing at the tree that resides just outside the border of San Angel, across the bridge, the mist scattered; sunlight dancing through the threaded branches. For a moment the nightmare has become reality again. Except, now he’s staring at  _himself_ with a startled gaze. The other Manolo is smiling back at him, however, eyes completely glazed over with a featureless blackness. The corners of his other’s lips have been split completely upwards, as if carved into a permanent smirk with a blade, tender flesh rotted along the jagged edges.

**_“You’re being forgotten, Manolo.”_ **

The noise emits from somewhere around him.

 _“No I’m not,”_  he attempts to respond, but his lips are sealed. Stitched, together, with a thin black string, infected skin searing with pain as he struggles to speak. He grabs at the sewing, screaming silently in the quieter world.

_No I’m not!_

_No I’m not!_

_I don’t believe you!_

**_“Manolo.”_ **

He can’t tell where the voice is origination from. It doesn’t belong to the previous entity, but reminds him of something like himself, as if he’s shrieking torment and agony into an empty shell of his own body. Tormenting him. So unfamiliarly familiar.

**_“Manolo.”_ **

Now the sound is emitting from the other’s broken mouth. The jaw flails, as if hooked like a trapped fish.  ** _“Manolo…”_**

He has to shut his eyes to will away the grotesque apparition. But still the words spear into his mind, his lips are ripping apart, the rope is straining and he can feel his last threads of sanity snapping under the weight of the fear. When he allows himself to look again, the night has gorged itself on the sun and the other him is gone, leaving in its wake the now withering tree. The eerie creaking of pendulum rope is still reverberating like dropping glass in the middle of the night.

And the stitching has been broken.

“Manny.”

He looks up.

There is his father, suspended by his broken neck from the noose that is knotted around the arch of a decaying branch. His limp body shifts back and forth in the breeze that has not blown once, back and forth beneath rotting wood, back and forth, back and forth and back and **forth**   **and back and**  –

Carlos’s hallowed gaze snaps open to burrow terror into his son like striking the center of his chest with a pick ax. “You’ve killed us, Manny,” the unholy being rasps. “You have killed all of us.”

Manolo screams, he knows he does, even though it is a mere shriek of white noise. Empty. Sparring the colder, crueler void of silence.

**_You killed them._ **

_I don’t believe you._

_I don’t believe you._

_I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!!_

Manolo sits up with a start, his heart slamming against the cage of his chest, the guitar quaking violently in his unstable hands. His startled shout has ricocheted along the room before rebounding into his ears like an echo of his nightmares, and he breathes, twice, glances around the comforting interior of his kitchen. The sunlight is streaming through the crack in the shutters and the salt that lines the sill is illuminated like diamond dust.

He’s awake.

 _It was a dream_ , he tells himself.

“Manolo?”

He nearly leaps out of his own skin and glances over to see La Muerte in the door frame, watching him carefully. “I’m sorry if I woke you,” he mutters, setting the guitar against the leg of the kitchen table. “It was only a bad dream.”

“Did you see La Lechusa?” she inquires.

He nods absently, glassy stare glimpsing at the shutters before he decidedly rises from his chair.

“She enjoys tormenting others with nightmares induced by their worst fears,” the Remembrance Spirit drones, watching him as he cautiously parts the panels. The roof parallel to the window is vacant, as if the owl had never been there at all. “I know what that is like.” She shuffles over to him to reassuringly grasp his shoulder, and he touches the saccharine skin with his opposing fingers, scarred from too many gashes and burns from old guitar strings. “Tell me what’s troubling you.”

He shakes his head, as if troubled by his thoughts. “I am afraid of being forgotten.”

“Many in this town are.”

“I mean that I want my family to be remembered as well. Visiting the Land of the Forgotten has really…  _influenced_  what I choose to do with my time here.”

La Muerte coaxes him to face her, one petite hand gently pressing against the outline of his jaw. “You will be okay, I’ll make sure of it. Just make sure you have a child with Maria to carry on your legacy. You’ll never be forgotten Manolo… don’t worry.”

He glances at his guitar from his peripheral vision. “That’s the problem, my lady.”

“That you worry?”

“Maria lost her third child just last month.”

The gravity seems to shift and converge on them, all at once. La Muerte’s expression drops down against its influence. “Oh, Manolo… I’m so sorry.”

“How will I be remembered?” Manolo whispers, recollecting the shattered remnants in the back of his mind. He digs for the scattered pieces amongst the box of memories and tries to piece together every word, every sound and every shift of his father’s lifeless, suspended body until he’s scraped the bottom. There are gaps, there are hisses, a jagged smirk. It was just a nightmare. It was just the truth of his present reality. “How will  _Maria’s_  family be remembered?”

“The town and all its future populace will remember you in stories, and tales and legends.” La Muerte smiles at him gingerly, tilting his head up by his chin. “You are one of their greatest heroes. Children aren’t your only hope, you know.”

“But I did really want one,” he admits reluctantly, failing to mirror her smile. Because his lips feel the points where the thread had pierced through tender skin. Because his cheeks are burning where the sliced flesh had been carved open. “I really,  _really_  want one.”

Somewhere in the other room, the front door closes, and the slap of the latch irks them both to attention.

“Manolo!” The pleasant voice chimes out, easing their surging anxiety. “Manolo, I’m back! Should I ask why you’ve lined the house with salt?” Maria enters the kitchen a moment later with Chuy at her side like some trained hound. She hesitates, noticing first La Muerte, now poised near the window, and secondly Manolo, reaching for the knife set by the cutting board. And then, both hands clasping either sides of her hips, she presses her lips into a thin line.

“Do I even  _want_  to know?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reason why this is so late? Because I'm a terrible person.   
> Short chapter is short to crank it out before I delayed the update any further.


	5. Batalla

**Dance with the Dead**

**.Five: Batalla.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

At the same time that evening, the Land of the Remembered is still shifting with the waning energy of the scraping realms, and Xibalba finds that the spirits are particularly active tonight. They don’t seem to care that the guardian of their worst ideals is roaming the streets in the absence of their more copacetic ruler, but he doesn’t mind since he locates exactly what he’s searching for much easier in light of the activity. And now he towers over these ghosts, staring down as they glare back up.

“So why should we help you?”

Xibalba exhales an agitated sigh. He apperceived before his arrival that they would be this difficult. And it's not like he can pin the blame for such ample hostility on anyone but himself. “Because I need two master swordsman to take my place and embark on a perilous journey to deliver a message to the Candle Maker,” he replies simply, attempting to weasel venomous charm into his every syllable, though he doubts such a technique would work on them, “since I cannot go.”

“And why not?” the other spirit of the duo asks him now.

“The Candle Maker’s realm is made of purity. I’ve been forbidden from passing into it.”

Adelita crosses her arms over her chest. “Why should we trust you?”

 _And here we go with the negotiations._ “I gave your cousin life.”

“After taking it,” Scardelita shoots back. “And you only resurrected him because he showed you up in a bull fight.”

“Ugh…” Xibalba rolls his hand, as if in thought. He knows that there's nothing he can offer them within the legal confines on the ancient rules, but he'll be damned (again) if he doesn't get the help he so desperately needs right now. “Also, because La Muerte needs the assistance.”

The older twin scoffs. “Oh, so a lady’s mad at you and you need to apologize?”

“Just get her flowers.”

“I hear that’s what the cool kids are doing now-a-days.”

He’s losing his patience. Rapidly. “No I mean”—he exhales yet another exasperated sigh and opts for a different approach while his sanity is still stable—“look, I may or may not have been sitting on top of an ancient demon that escaped and now wants to kill me and my wife, so I don’t have much time for this bickering, okay? Could you _please_ go to the Candle Maker since I’m in no condition and tell him La Lechusa broke the seal?”

The girls glance at each other incredulously. Adelita is the first to reply, “La Lechusa?”

“Ain’t that a myth?”

“Just go already!” he snaps, ramming his staff into the ground. The tiles shatter effortlessly, startling several of the spirits passing around them and sending them scattering like a flock of enigmatic birds. Neither of the twins is fazed by his outburst, however, but they seem to shift away from their previously sarcastic attitudes. Xibalba's fatigue cripples him immediately and he has no choice but to lean on his staff with more weight just to narrowly avoid hitting the floor. Much to his immediate surprise, the twins take either of his arms (albeit reluctantly, judging by the way they seem to hesitate). They keep him from tipping over at least.

“What’s in it for us?” Scardelita asks now.

“If you’re both lucky, I’ll spare your lives.”

Adelita snorts in failed attempt not to laugh. “Intimidation won’t work on us!”

“We’re already dead!”

“And it’s not like ghosts have any need for money.”

“So that’s also not a valid bargain.”

Xibalba loathes being in such a weakened state of being - he can feel a familiar darkness exerting pressure in his chest, like a growing life form that feeds on his tar and consumes his brittle, immortal bones. He's running out of time. And _of course_ the twins are being as equally stubborn about this as he had anticipated. “How about some fun afterlife adventure… and a deal?”

“We’re listening.”

 _Good_. “If you do this for me I’ll let you rule the Land of the Forgotten for one day.”

“Keep talking.”

 _Mierda_. “Three days. I can't give you any more than that.”

“Sweet!”

“That’s deal enough.”

“Show us the way boogey man!”

 _Finally_. He envelopes them in his obsidian wings like a cloak, and utilizing what little power remains in his system, transports them through the passage in between the realms until they’ve hit the maw of the Mountain of Souls. He slithers away from them, recollects himself beside the gate’s mouth, and taps his staff against the crumbling stone. "There's something I must tend to, so in the mean time, I want you to take this."

The snake materializes into its living form upon command. Its body ripples with an ancient power that leaves sparks on the flakes of its opalescent scales before it shudders, and reflexively coils around its master's arm. He coaxes it onto Adelita’s shoulder with a quick statement in what the twins recognize to be backwards Latin, where the creature perches, and then falls still once more.

“In case anything goes wrong," the Forgotten deity continues, gesturing to the serpentine beast, "my old friend will protect you.”

“Boogey man’s making friends with the reptiles now.”

“Auntie Carmen’s right, he really is a snake.”

Xibalba rolls his eyes. “Yes well you can tell Carmen to-” He freezes. A dismal, foreboding feeling overwhelms his being, pushing shards of ice under his flesh. In the back of his mind he can hear the blackness of a void from beyond beckoning to him.  _Something’s not right_. “I have to go,” he admits quickly, and only a split second later he’s disappeared in a plume of beryl energy and onyx feathers, heading for a world for neither the living nor the dead, leaving the distinct scent of fire in his wake.

"Wait, sis, does that mean we have to pass the test of that gate guardian?"

After several minutes of a passive shrug and awkward silence, the tangible flutter of wings awakens their natural sense of apprehension. The snake reels up, hissing at a mass that moves across the shadows, not quite visible, almost like a forgotten dream that becomes incoherently familiar. Materializing in a plume of dark energy, La Lechusa perches on a wilted boulder face only several yards away. “What are two lonely spirits doing all the way out here?”

“Nothing,” the twins answer together in the same fluid beat.

Obsidian eyes glance them both over. She appears to be gauging them for any sort of visible fear until her pertinent glare falls upon the serpent still seething defensively. “You’ve made a deal with that rat Xibalba, haven't you?”

Adelita glances at her sister. “Xibalba?”

“That name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Lechusa digs her talons into the perch. “Don’t play stupid with me, kiddies. You have his little pet for a reason, don't you?”

Scardelita grapples the snake by its slender body and to its surprise, thrusts it into her vest's inner pocket. “Nope, no deal here!”

The demon grins, exposing jagged fangs within a cracked beak. “I see." With a single flap of her mighty wings she rockets from her place, sailing over to an up-heaved rift of rock. Despite the jerking movements, her head twists to inhuman angles so she can keep her sights imperatively fixated on the other spirits, before settling normally on her new, much closer roost. "Since you're so intent on playing _games_ , let's start a new round."

"We don't really have time for that," Scardelita deludes, grasping her sister's elbow.

"So if you'll kindly excuse us."

"We'll just be on our way."

The demon screeches, forcing them to cover their ears as the shrill, unholy scream rips a hole through the sky and stirs the ground beneath their feet. Slabs of stone strike up through the surface and form a haphazard ring around the twins, boxing them into the flatland arena. They immediately whip around to face the creature, unsheathing their swords instinctively, prepared for the glory of death on the battlefield once more, should it come down to that.

Lechusa clacks her beak closed with a content, psychotic smile. "Oh, look at that...it seems you're staying a while."

The serpent reflexively launches out of Scardelita's vest. It ripples with emerald energy that spikes outwards from its layered scales, unleashing an ancient power of darkness; its body cracks like snapping bones, expanding and contracting, allowing writhing life to filter into both heads. The snake's body grows undaunted, free of its yielding prison for the first time in centuries, allowing it to rival the sheer monstrosity of a whale. And in the same span of mere moments, It coils around the girls protectively with both heads pointed towards the opposing demon.

"Seems we are," the eldest twin avows.

Lechusa bellows with a cruel, sadistic laughter that washes over the immediate area. "Spare me the trouble. You cannot protect them! You may have your form again, _Leviathan_ , but your power will never be restored! You are nothing more than a backwater demon's lap dog!"

" _Leviathan_ ," Adelita mutters to herself, glancing up at the right head high above.

"I'm strong enough to crush every bone in your damnable body!" both heads reply in sync.

Lechusa spits back, but quickly recollects herself. "Why, no need for such violence. I simply want to challenge these insufferable spirits to a game. You have my word, that I will leave all three of you alone to fulfill your task, if you can beat me.”

“Is it that tilt-a-whirl maze with the giant wrecking balls?” Scardelita speaks up.

“We know how to win that already.”

“Our cousin told us.”

“He beat it before, you know.”

She narrows her gaze at them. “That is not up to me. But... Yes, a maze does sound delightful.” She sketches a symbol into the rock face, a design neither of the siblings have seen before, but one that holds some semblance of power by the way Leviathan recoils. “How about a maze"--she spreads her wings. Suddenly, her feathers are melting into cast iron blades that sheen in the air and nearly slice through the very essence of light-- ** _"out of your own nightmares?”_**

And then, the void consumes them.

* * *

 

Leviathan watches the twins drop to the ground like limp sand bags and their swords clatter harmlessly on the rigid surface, trapped within a sleep paralysis that cannot affect him. He hunches all the tension in his muscles into his lower half, prepared to strike should the owl demon react first. She studies him with a narrowed expression that borders loathing. "You don't have your powers any more, dear Leviathan," she coos, ruffling her feathers, ready to take flight. "What do you plan on doing now, hm? You can't take me, not like this."

"You'll regret those words when you're choking on your bones!"

She soars upwards, landing gracefully on the jagged peak of the upturned wall. "Every demon knows Xibalba revoked everything that you had: the size, the strength, the abilities...you lost your _status_. Maybe I'll seize this opportunity and cast you into Hell with the rest of your siblings."

Both serpentine heads howl with resentment. With a speed that rivals lightning he flings himself forward, spiraling with the left head's fangs extended. Lechusa dodges the lunge swiftly, lashes out with her talons, and manages to clip the side of the right head's face. He hits the platform on the other side of the wall.

And shatters.

His body explodes into droplets of water that spiral across the barren plateau and solidify just as abruptly. Lechusa streamlines into the air, bladed feathers glistening against the voided sky, takes a sharp curve and steers into a steep nose dive. Leviathan erupts into another burst of water as she barrels through him. The perspiration sticks to the harpie like glue; he solidifies more quickly, and binds himself around her torso, slamming them both down into the dirt.

She tears sizable chunks of flesh from whatever she can grasp in her beak, exposing the curves of his ribs and splattering tar across her feathers. He clutches her in a grip that could have killed a human in moments but is just barely strong enough to fracture her bones.

Lechusa bursts into her nova of wispy dark particles that slides out of Leviathan's choke hold and re-materialize midair. Leviathan predicts her movements with precision and manages to lash out with his closest head, slamming her in the gut with the force of colliding trucks, sending her sprawling across the mesa. She digs her talons into the withered ground, allowing herself ample balance, enough to project herself back up onto her feet with her wings spreading out to catch the wind.

"You cannot defeat me like this!" she exclaims, her golden irises glossing over with an amethyst sheen. A sovereign, ancient energy convulses from the cracks in the flatland around her, rising up in the form of rapier swords. "I'll end you where you grovel, Leviathan!"

The amaranthine blade fully densify in the air. They twirl in a circle around her being, which is pulsating with a purple-and-red hued spirit. Leviathan recognizes the surging power as her breaking point - she's willing to unleash all of her might on him should he manage to survive her next attack, and in his present form, he would _definitely_ not be able to fight back. At the very least, she would single-handedly desecrate the entire Mountain of Souls with ease.

"Say hello to your siblings for me," she declares with a voice as hollowed as Hell itself.

Something cracks.

Emerging from his slumber with the urgency of a startled deer, the Gate Guardian swings his sword down from high above, cleaving a chasm into the earth. La Lechusa convulses into a plume of dark energy and pallid feathers before the blade can make contact. The rebounding force rocks the ground beneath the ophidian like an awakening fault line, pitching the plateau like a carnival ride, threatening to destroy the entire flattop.

 ** _"Away with you!"_** the skeleton bellows to the air. Leviathan feels Lechusa's presence instantly fade from the present plane. He almost forgot the power the Guardian holds in a place like this - the same will of an agent of the Holy One; blessed words that lesser demons like them must obey. It is why they cannot pass into the Cave of Souls, and why Xibalba must send pure spirits, like the twins, in his stead.

Safe for now, Leviathan recoils, shudders, and fills the wounds in his body with thick tar to seal the gaps as emergency first aid. It will have to do while the rest of him recovers from the brawl.

He tosses a silent gaze up to the Guardian before turning his attention to the fallen sisters. The Owl Witch may be gone for the time being, but the girls are still under her infamous paralysis spell, and if they couldn't find their way out of the maze...they would never awaken again.

Leviathan grits his fangs together.

 _Xibalba's going to be pissed_.

* * *

.

.

.

**_You are the eldest._ **

**_And by birth right…_ **

**_…you were the first to die._ **

Adelita gasps as consciousness hits her just as suddenly as the darkness had. La Lechusa's voice fades out. The world fades in. It is a field she would have found familiar if everything would stop blurring for more than a moment; the sands are adorned by distinct splatters of crimson, the grass blades are slicing through the waning sunlight, giving off a surreal quality to the same redness that is spilled across their surface.

 _Blood_ , she's looking at blood.

_Scar?_

_**She can't hear you.** _

Adelita wonders why those words hold such a bitter taste on her tongue. She screams, but her voice is muted, swallowed by the eerie silence. Her gaze is now transfixed on the vital fluids below her. It's like observing the inside of a fractured skull - aberrant and horrid yet so outlandish it appears to become surreal. She's not sure if it's hers. But what if it is? What if it's Scardelita's?

_**Ah, that's what I like to see.**_

_**Fear.** _

_**Hopelessness.** _

_**Give in to it.** _

_**Resign yourself to oblivion.** _

_Where is my sister?_

She tries to force herself to her feet, but a crippling ache in her torso keeps her chained to the ground, beside that goddamn _blood_. Her fingertips respond better than the rest of her body, so she reaches across to touch the stain, and realizes the plasmatic fluids have already plastered to her skin. The panic sets in before she can fully comprehend the gravity of the situation - it isn't Scardelita's, but it is definitely her own, and that means she's hurt. _Bad_.

**_Show me that terror once more._ **

Adelita gradually reaches back towards the pain in her side. She touches the hilt of the sword. Tries to grab it.

**_Show me your despair._ **

The angle allows her to tug the blade free with two pulls. She's thankful now that she can't hear her own screaming.

**_Show me._ **

The boot steps register just as the presence of the soldier above her casts a shadow over her writhing form. She gets it now. She realizes that this isn't the time she was killed on the battlefield. Instead of dying she was merely (albeit gravely) wounded, but she did recover in time to join her sister in the war again and again and again. God only knows it would take more than _this_ to bring either of them down.

_But it was..._

**_Kill him._**

**_Just as you did before._ **

**_It’s easy, you know that._ **

**_He was your first._ **

**_It was so, so quick.._ **

**_Go on._ **

**_Become the soldier you were destined to be._ **

She rolls out of the way just as the man brings his sword down and gorges into the dirt. Her torso flares up like she's swallowed the sun, but her body reacts reflexively, overriding the pain and allowing her to easily maneuver up to her knees. With her last bit of strength she lashes the sword forward to slice rigidly through the man's right leg precisely below the knee. In place of his cry is a hollowed, eerie quiet.

_**I knew you could do it.** _

The man drops, claret pooling out of his severed stump like watching a surreal painting of river rapids. Fatigue, insurmountable pain, and disgust overwhelm her so abruptly she twists to the side and vomits. Acid. Water. Blood.

**_That's it._ **

**_Let the war consume you._ **

Fear and rage and despair subsume her sense of sanity bit by bit, gradually eating away at her like hives of piranhas on a carcass, taking small chunks but in vast quantities. The tears burn their way down her face like liquid fire. And it's only when she accepts what she's just done does she want to wake up. She _wants_ to hold Scardelita again and know that everything is alright. She _wants_ to - _needs_ to - _has_ to - wake up before her coherence is reduced to nothing but the desire to survive and the will to do whatever she must in order to see her sister again.

_**Kill him, then.** _

She grasps the hilt of the sword with her last modicum of conjured strength.

_**Kill him.** _

His vocal prayers are like whispers on the wind. She lines her glare up with his bewildered eyes, which are darting from her to his gushing wound to her sword to the sky back to her in such rapid succession she can almost see the mortality being engulfed by encroaching death.

**_Kill him, Adelita._ **

_I..._

She shifts to raise the blade with both hands directly above his chest, aiming as close to the heart as she can get through the hazing of her vision.

_I..._

He's pleading, she thinks.

_But I..._

**_But you want to see Scardelita again, don't you?_ **

She clutches the hilt more firmly. Yes, she does want to see her sister again, more than anything. The only way to survive in this cruel, unforgiving world is to fight, unyielding and unwilling to break; to claim the right to live beneath the sun and the stars by securing your future with blood on your hands and apathy in your heart. And only the dead could ever truly know how she had never, ever used to believe this.

_But the world adapts. And so will I._

**_Now put an end to his suffering._ **

She rears the sword up.

_The world adapts..._

And she drives it down, on a direct curve into her own stomach, piercing effortlessly through layers of flesh and muscle, out through her back. The demon screeches from somewhere all around her, splitting apart the distance with lightning and hatred and revulsion.

_And so will I._

* * *

 

**_._ **

**_._ **

**_._ **

Adelita gasps when she awakens again. Her torso burns with phantom pain as she sits up with a start, glancing in every direction to seek out Lechusa, to confirm that every detail in her surroundings are the same and that she is back in the present, in the here and in the now. Instead of the upturned landscape she is expecting, everything has returned to its normal, stoic desolation, as if Lechusa had never been there at all.

Scardelita is hunched against Leviathan who has both gazes fixated on something over Adelita's shoulder. The elder twin glances back now to see the Gate Guardian's unsheathed sword wedged into the ground, several meters from where the spirit had been laying only moments prior.

"What happened?" Adelita asks, subconsciously rubbing her side to ease the fabricated aches.

"The bag of bones chased the Bird Witch away," Leviathan's right head answers. "You were both trapped in her nightmares for a long time."

"How long?"

"Several days."

"What?!"

Scardelita rolls her eye. "He's kidding. It was just a few hours. I woke up only a couple of minutes before you did."

The other soldier breathes easier. "I see...so it wasn't real." She compels herself to stand, adjusts to being conscious once more, and makes her way over to her sister. “I'm going to be honest, I don't know what kind of nightmare that was, but it was definitely an altered reality of a memory."

"It is a torment technique," the left head says matter-of-factly. "She plays with a person's worst fears. It's hilariously vile."

She kneels down beside the younger girl and drapes one arm around her shoulders. "I had to relive the first time I killed someone… Remember our first battle, when I was injured and almost didn't make it?" Scardelita nods weakly. "...What did she show you?”

The single-eyed twin glances at the ground, both hands clutching the hem of her skirt, as if anchoring herself to reality.

_"She made me watch you die.”_

* * *

.

.

.

Xibalba allows, just this once, for the evil to freely take hold. Darkness oozes across his Sclera, replacing the gentle whiteness with an eerie black color to reflect the malicious thoughts circling around in his mind. Both wings crack as his bones pop out of place to take their original form, shedding the midnight feathers to expose velvet flesh, snapping cartilage rearranging to fill gaps and stretch. Skeletal bird wings, just as black but much more menacing, laced together by strands of oozing tar. His horns unfurl and sharpen to points, his fangs extend as if he's a wild animal on the hunt. The ruby-dipped skulls face forward, scanning the graveyard wasteland around him.

He doesn't let the power consume him like this, but for now, it makes the trip that much easier.

"You came, Xibalba."

He recognizes the powerful flap of wings and watches as the demon glides to a stop just ahead of him, digging all four sets of claws into the dirt. She resembles a griffin or a hippogriff, in a sense, with the front body of an eagle and the hind legs and three tails most like that of a lion. Her wings stretch out from her chest, shoulders, and back to span nearly twice the length of La Lechusa's, and the horns that run from the center of her brow curve up and back. But instead of flesh, the outside of her body is defined by bones that are filled to the brim with black tar to substitute for a muscle structure, like his own.

She isn't very intimidating, for a demon at least, but it's easy to forget the natural power of any unholy beast, especially one double the size of Xibalba himself.

He bows his head politely, one hand raised to his chest. "Ziz."

She spreads her wings and dips into a bow. "Lord Xibalba." She rights herself a moment later, tone hardening as they push the formalities behind them. "Where is Leviathan?"

"Tending to an important task. And what of Behemoth?"

"He should be here soon. As it were, you're wondering why I've called for you." She takes a dramatic pause to permit Xibalba a chance to speak, folding her wings up against her sides. He doesn't seem to possess any input, so she drones on. "La Lechusa has escaped."

"She has."

"I wrote those symbols myself. How did she break them?"

"I don't know."

Ziz shakes her head. "You agreed by the ancient rules to protect the Land of the Forgotten from Lechusa, but you've barely managed to help your own _wife_. If that Witch succeeds in killing either one of you the natural balance will be thrown and the realm you're supposed to guarding will become part of Hell once again."

"But what am I going to do about it? Play her in another game?"

"You have to destroy her."

Xibalba flexes his wings, but compels himself to keep a stoic expression. "I could die."

"That's something you agreed to when you won your right to rule. If any of the Guardians became corrupt with their power, destruction was a last, but valid resort." Ziz, the previous ruler of Xibalba's world, peers down at her heir with feigned contempt. Really, she pities him for having to make up for what she had failed to do so many centuries ago. She deems it appropriate to pin the blame on herself for allowing La Lechusa to best her at a stupid game, just to have this small, futile creature come in to take over himself. "We've sealed her away once. Now she leaves us with no choice."

Xibalba thinks of La Muerte before nodding his head as an acknowledgement. "Will you help me?"

"We can't leave, remember?" Behemoth tromps up to them from somewhere to Xibalba's right. He resembles a Mayan-esque painting of a boar the size of an elephant, but instead of a beast's head he bears a skull and face like a crocodile, and his ribs reside on the outside of his body. His hooves leave deep track marks in the sodden dirt that dry up immediately after, and the imprints cease to exist.

"Isn't there anything you can do from here?"

Behemoth scoffs, his wide, stricken eyes brimming with amusement. "Not after being banished here by that witch's game." He's referring to when Ziz lost her game against Lechusa, and was cursed to walk Hell for the rest of eternity, and he had attempted to play her in attempt to free his trapped sister, only to meet the same fate. "We can't leave until she's either killed or agrees to play us again, and we actually _win_ this time."

"So help me then," Xibalba says insistently, "and I will free you. You have my word."

"The word of a trickster like you?" Ziz retorts incredulously. "May I remind you that the last time you gave your _word_ to anyone you created that whole commotion with that boy from San Angel?"

"I was only having a bit of fun," Xibalba replies dejectedly, crossing his arms against his chest like an irritated child.

Ziz's chest feathers bristle with contempt. "You don't seem to understand the weight of a _promise_."

"I'm your only chance whether you trust me or not."

"He's right sis," Behemoth remarks, grating his tusk against an unmarked tomb stone. "Besides, we can't stay in this world forever while Leviathan has all the fun up there!"

The oldest of the trio seems to consider his comment. She ponders over Leviathan's situation, and then her present own, before she shakes out her wings. " _Fine_ ," the griffin demon replies with a hiss, "since we don't have any other choice. We'll help you, Xibalba. But you do comprehend the severity of what is required of you." 

He nods reluctantly.

In his gaze, she senses his desire - to protect his wife, to save his realm and to keep his life. Xibalba is a lying rat but he has always loved La Muerte more than anything else in his broken, barren world. It's all she needs to affirm her ward. She gestures to Behemoth with one wing, and he steps up towards the pavonine king of the forgotten realm. "So be it. Foremost apologies, but you can't be conscious for this part."

Before Xibalba can register her words Behemoth has spun on his front legs and slammed his hind hooves into the former's chest, sending the demon sprawling through several grave markers, and knocking him straight into a welcome, bitter darkness.

The last thing he hears is Ziz's laconic voice in the back of his wavering mind.

"Embrace the demon's powers, Xibalba... Become _Caim_."

.

.

.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm back with a lengthy chapter to make up for my absence. c:
> 
> Update: As always, thank you for all your wonderful comments and support! It means a lot to me so many of you like this story and have stuck around with all my erratic updates.


	6. Alas

In the beginning, there was light, and there was dark. It does not matter how these entities came to be - the world simply became, and with this life came the responsibility of keeping it threaded together. The Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten were both maintained by the ancient deity Quetzalcoatl and his brother Xolotl, the former which guarded the spirits of the Remembered, the latter which ruled the barren wasteland of the Forgotten.

Quetzalcoatl could not focus both on the wellbeing of his spirits and the ones created on the Earth - so he and Xolotl emptied their powers into a trinity of balances: one of the Fire and the Light, to guide the lost to the goodness of the Land of the Remembered; one of the Darkness and the Wind, to watch over the lost who grovel in despair in the Land of the Forgotten; one of the Water and the Earth, to write the stories of the earth-dwelling beings, and to keep order among the conflicting worlds.

One day, a demon travelling from the far north crossed through the Underworld from somewhere even further down below, seeking a home for itself. It stumbled upon the realm of the Forgotten, and sought to win its right to rule the withered lands. Xolotl agreed to the demon's terms; played a game that has long since been forgotten to mortal and immortal knowledge alike.

And lost.

The demon cast Xolotl into the heart of a stone pillar, where he would remain for eternity, until the end of days. Enraged by the results, Quetzalcoatl confronted the foreign demon, demanding the safe return of his beloved brother. But the demon was not to be tried - it was nothing like the origin of wordly energy the feathered serpent had been born from. Instead it was something wicked. Something sinister.

Quetzalcoatl learned that the only thing that could weaken such a vile creature was the word of a holy being it had never heard of before, but was spoken of in tongues much like his own kind. He harnessed these divine energies and formed a being that would alone be able to handle the demon's cruel nature; he called this being, The Candle Maker.

The Candle Maker was birthed from the Water and from the Earth, within a realm that was created from wax. His job was to oversee the existence of the mortal beings, judge them, gauge their actions and their hearts. The Cave of Souls, this realm of wax and water and earth, became a holy place of Quetzalcoatl's own, to keep the demon locked within the Land of the Forgotten so that it could not cross into the other worlds.

Angered, the demon cursed the Land of the Forgotten, so that any ruler after him would be afflicted by the powers of Darkness and Wind; they would obtain his essence, his power, and his protective nature - and they would be signified by black wings. Of course, they would have to play him in a game of his choice if they were to dethrone him. The curse could not be lifted, unfortunately for Quetzalcoatl.

The ophidian deity did not want to risk the destruction of his world, so he never did try to bring back his brother. As the centuries passed, the spirit worlds grew in power, and the demon ruling the Land of the Forgotten was challenged by other creatures, both from his own order and other places in the world that had yet to become worshipping grounds.

"This demon's name was Caim," Ziz adds as they cross deeper into the cavern. "His first successor was myself. I challenged him, but I had been around long before the corruption of the world ever got to his mortal flesh - I was clever, and I won...casting him back into the world far below. I was the first to obtain his powers." The corridor stretches into further darkness, giving an eerie, frigid feeling to its already icy walls. "My reign ended many millenniums ago, when La Lechusa came to be."

"And then I took over," Xibalba concludes, flexing his wings.

"You did. But it was during the ruling of La Lechusa that Quetzalcoatl began to succumb to the sorrow of never seeing his brother again. See, when I first took over, I had offered to free the trapped deity from his prison...but unfortunately, it wasn't a curse that Xolotl had been affected by. The stone pillar was a _tombstone_ , not a prison. Caim had played Xolotl for his right to rule at the cost of his own life."

The tunnel breaks into a maw of an open flat. Directly at the center of the room is a pillar.

"I could not undo what Caim had done. By the time La Lechusa's reign was nearing its end, that's when things began to change anew. Overcome with grief, Quetzalcoatl searched desperately for a new guardian to take his place - one to be reborn of Fire and Light, to care for the spirits of the Land of the Forgotten with a merciful heart. He found La Muerte." The griffin pads around the massive center pillar a single time. "She was lost, searching for her family and for the one she called her Husband. Quetzalcoatl sympathized with her, blessed her with his powers and his gifts...and died."

"Died of a broken heart," Behemoth mutters, shaking his head in disbelief, "what a mortal way to go."

"La Lechusa still has Caim's powers," Ziz continues, "as I do, and that is why she is still so powerful. You have the most among all of us, however, since you are the current King. But when you played Lechusa for the right to rule you did not accept the gifts whole-heartedly, and because of that, the energy was stored away within you, waiting to be harnessed and unlocked."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Ziz stretches one wing to the pillar. "You must become Caim. Accept the powers of the Darkness and the Wind. Face your fear and overcome all that is holding you back."

"Tell us _Balby_ ," Behemoth taunts, nudging his arm with a sharpened tusk. "What do you fear most? You're the one who has the ability to make a fear a reality - you can do it to yourself. Visualize it. Make it happen!"

Xibalba wafts the boisterous demon off. "I know, I know...but there's not much I fear."

"Tell us whatever you do fear, then," Ziz encourages. "It doesn't have to be a greatest fear, not just yet. We can narrow it down."

"Alright." He ponders on the subject matter for several prolonged minutes before speaking up again. "Well, for starters, I definitely fear La Noche. She's come between me and La Muerte once before, and needless to say, my wife didn't talk to me for ninety-four years. La Noche's tricky, likes to mess with her little sister, and above all, is almost as terrifying to be around she's angry. I think it runs in the blood line."

"No one likes their in-laws," Behemoth replies, plopping himself down on the frigid ground. "I don't think that kind of fear counts."

He recalls being afraid of facing Leviathan in the sea caves. "I fear death."

Ziz's head perks up. "Do you?"

"I mean, I'm already dead, but I'm talking about...real death. Ceasing to exist." He hesitates, treading carefully over his word choices. "When a spirit is destroyed, or when demons kill each other, or when deities like Quetzalcoatl roll over and die simply because of despair...it's something that's always managed to get under my skin. I watch the spirits in my realm do the same. They straggle on hoping to be able to return to the Land of the Remembered one day, and most accept their fates faster than the others. They always make the mistake of losing hope. They know their time has come and the only thing left for them is the wind that I summon to blow away their ashes."

Ziz casts Behemoth a sideways glance; perhaps it is sympathetic, or uncertain. She used to be in Xibalba's position, after all.

"It's always been my job to bring death to the dead and lay them down for eternal slumber. Yet, I've only ever been aware that they either travel to the place of the Holy One, where demons are rejected from, that the humans pray to for miracles and good intentions... or the Place Below, where we're always welcome, but are too afraid to go." He quickly back pedals. "Not that you two have a choice."

"Shove it," Behemoth snaps.

Ziz nods, still enveloped in her task. "So you fear death, or you fear the place you'll go once you die?"

"I fear being anywhere without La Muerte," he admits, casting his glare to the ground. "I'm afraid of losing the only person who I've ever truly loved - the only thing that gives me any hope for the world at all. I'm afraid I won't be able to protect her any more than I can protect myself." He suddenly glances up at Ziz, at the pillar, his confidence returning to him once more. "My biggest fear is that I'm simply too _weak_."

Ziz grins at him triumphantly. "Now we're getting somewhere."

* * *

.

.

.

The Candle Maker has his gaze transfixed on a black candle that burns with a ghostly emerald flame. It flickers, subsequently convulsing into a blue hue. And gradually, his anxiety mounts.

" _Xibalba_."

**Author's Note:**

> I love this movie, and got this idea some time after watching it.  
> Takes place in a more realistic-like setting, so: Warning: Will be more mature in later chapters for possible violence, implications and mild swearing.  
> Let me know what you thought~


End file.
